PEKING 



PELAGIUS 



13 



miserable. The manufactures are unimportant. 

 The government of the city is distinct from that 

 of tin- department, and is administered by a 

 superintendent (a high imperial functionary ), a 

 mayor, and officers in the several quarters. The 

 police have often trouble in keeping order ; some 

 10,000 soldiers or militia are quartered in the town. 

 The daily Peking Gazette, a pamphlet of sixty to 

 seventy pages, is the imperial official journal. 

 Since 1868 there has been an imperial university 

 with American and European professors. 



As to the reproach of infanticide which has been 

 current against the population, Dr Edkins says : 

 ' liifniitii-nle is almost unknown in Peking. The 

 dead-cart which traverses the streets at early 

 morning receives the bodies of poor children dying 

 by ordinary causes and whose parents are not able 

 to bury them. The mothers would rather, if not 

 willing to keep their infanta, carry them to the 

 foundling hospital*, which are established in the 

 Inner and Outer Cities, than take their lives. At 

 pre-ent the people are not aware of the existence of 

 infanticide, nor is this atrocious custom known in 

 the surrounding country; indeed, it exists only in 

 some provinces, four or five in number. The dead- 

 cart is in connection with the foundling hospitals.' 



See Rennie's Peking and the rrkimient ( 18IJ5 ) ; William- 

 son's Journeys in North China, especially chapter xvi., 

 which was contributed by Dr Edkins (1K70); Martin's 

 Chineu: their EJnration, J>hilo>/>/ii/. and Leltert (1881); 

 Williamg's The Middle Kimi'lum ( revised ed. 1883) ; and 

 other works cited under C'HIXA. 



a celebrated heresiarch of the 5th 

 century. He was jirobably born about the middle 

 of the 4th century, in Britain, or, according to some, 

 in Brittany, his name being supposed to be a Greek 

 rendering (Pelagios) of the Celtic appellative 

 Morgan ('sea-born'). He was a monk, but he 

 never entered into holy orders. He settled in 

 Knine about 400, where he seems to have lieen 

 scandalised by tin; low tone and morals then obtain- 

 ing. His views seem U> have lieen early developed ; 

 and during his stay in Koine he seems to have given 

 them full expression especially in his commentaries 

 on the Pauline Kpi<tles, which were published at 

 this time. It has ijeen remarked that his doctrinal 

 tendencies have something in common with those 

 of the Eastern Church, and may therefore l>e taken 

 as showing that Eastern influences were still alive 

 in the British churches. But more probably his 

 theology was the outcome of his own devout and 

 earnest, but narrow anil anti-speculative mind. 

 Jerome and Orosius tell tales to his discredit ; 

 but these are refuted by the respect with which 

 Augustine always sneaks of his character and con- 

 duct. The controversy about Pelagianism was not 

 started by IVIagius, but by a devoted disciple of 

 bis. In Koine he had attached to his views a 

 follower of great energy named Ccelestius, probably 

 an Irish Scot, originally u lawyer, who was practis- 

 ing in Rome when IVlagius rami- thither. He 

 liecainea monk, and accompanied 1'clagius wherever 

 he went. In 410, after the sark of the city by the 

 v'iotha, the two withdrew to Africa. Aftrr some- 

 time Pelagius made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, 

 where he met St Jerome. Ceelestins having re- 

 mained at Carthage, and sought to be admitted to 

 ordination, his doctrines became tin; subject of 

 discussion, and in a synod several opinions ascribed 

 to him were condemned proceeding! which intro- 

 duced St Augustine into the controversy. Mean- 

 while Pelagius remained at -Jerusalem, and news 

 of the proceedings at Carthage having been carried 

 to Palestine, in 415 he was accused of heresy liefore 

 the synod of Jerusalem. As adopted by Cielestius, 

 big doctrines seem to have been a reaction against 

 Gnosticism, Manichfeism, and Fatalism, in the 

 interest as he conceived of a higher morality than 



he found in Rome. The Pelagian heresy was 

 held to deny original sin ; Adam's sin injured him- 

 self only ; his posterity are born as innocent as he 

 was before the fall. Adam would have died even 

 if he had not sinned. Children are baptised that 

 they may be united to Christ, not that they may 

 l>e purged from original sin. It is possible to live 

 without sin. Grace as understood by the Catholic 

 Church was not required ; free-will and the teaching 

 of the law may suffice ; Pelagius did not grant that 

 the will must lie moved by God before a man can 

 take one step onwards towards life eternal. The 

 essence of the doctrine is a view of the freedom of 

 the will that may be called liberty of indifferences ; 

 the will is equally free to choose to do good and to 

 do evil. This freedom is found also in heathens ; 

 and thus natural ability heightens human re- 

 sponsibility, while it seems to diminish the need 

 of divine grace. 



The impeachment failed, and in a synod subse- 

 quently held at Uiospolis in the same year Pelagius 

 evaded condemnation by accepting the decrees of the 

 synod of Carthage. But a new synod of Carthage 

 in 416 condemned Pelagius and Cojlestius, and wrote 

 to Pope Innocent I. requesting his approval of the 

 sentence, with which request Innocent complied. 

 Zosimus, the successor of Innocent, wavered ; but 

 a council of 214 bishops was held in Carthage, in 

 which the doctrines of Pelagius were formally con- 

 demned in nine canons ; and on receipt of these 

 Zosimus reopened the cause, cited and condemned 

 Coolestius and Pelagius, and published a decree 

 adopting the canons of the African Council, and 

 requiring that all bishops should suhscril>e them, 

 under pain of deposition. Nineteen Italian bishops 

 refused to accept these canons and were deposed. 

 Their leader was Julian, Bishop of Eclanum, near 

 Beneventum. Pelagius himself was banished from 

 Rome in 418 by the Emperor Honorius, and he and 

 Cuelestius were again condemned by the Council of 

 Ephesus in 431. The date and place of the death 

 of Pelagiiis are not known. The most important of 

 the writings on the Pelagian side have been lost. 

 Julian is chiefly known through the replies of 

 Augustine, whose anti- Pelagian treatises are edited 

 by the Rev. Dr W. Bright ( 1880 ). Pelagius's Four- 

 teen Books of a Commentary on St Paul's Epistles, 

 his Epistle to Demetrius, and his Memorial to Pope 

 Innocent, included by collectors in the works of 

 St Jerome, are much mutilated, but yet almost 

 certainly genuine. All his other works have been 

 lost, except some fragments. 



SEMI-PELAGIANISM was a modification of the 

 doctrine of the Pelagians as to the powers of the 

 human will, and as to the effects to be attributed 

 to the action of the supernatural grace of God, and 

 of the divine decree for the predestination of the 

 elect. The Pelagians, discarding altogether the 

 doctrine of the fall of Adam, and the idea that 

 the powers of the human will had l>een weakened 

 through original sin, taught that man, without any 

 supernatural gift from (iod, is able, by his own 

 natural powers, to fulfil the entire law, and to do 

 every act which is necessary for the attainment of 

 eternal life. The condemnation of this doctrine 

 by the several councils held in the early part of 

 the 5th century is capable of various constructions, 

 and has !>een urged by some to the extreme of 

 denying altogether the liberty of man, and con- 

 verting the human will into a merely passive 

 instrument, whether of divine grace upon tne one 

 hand, or of sinful concupiscence upon the other. 

 The writings of St Augustine on this controversy 

 have l>een differently construed by the different 

 Christian communions, and the same diversity of 

 opinion existed in his own day. Among those 

 who, dissenting from the extreme view of Pelagius, 

 at the same time did not go to the full' length of 



